(Top left) “The blind leading the blind” need not have a negative connotation if the sight-impaired people in question are as well-informed, discerning – and above all, well-read – as this group filing past the cylindrical Madrid Pavilion.(Bottom left) The interior of the Madrid Pavilion has been designed to resemble a Roman amphitheater. Talks on various themes are held a regular intervals in the space.

Mexican culinary patrimony is also on-hawk, with all things chile-related, from books to plastic decorations, for sale.

The raison d’etre of the annual fair, of course, is hawking books, one of which was a handy compendium of phrases using variants of the slang term “chingar,” and another a handy guide to racist phrases born on the Mexican wind.

Acclaimed Mexican writer and editor Alberto Ruy Sanchez received the FIL’s “Homenaje al Bibliofilo” award in the fair’s Juan Rulfo Auditorium.Ruy, who was a friend of Octavio Paz, among other Mexican literary titans, currently possesses over 50,000 books, thoroughly qualifying him as a bibliofilo.